blogtomakemoneynow.com

There are umpteen blogging experts in the world, some better than others, and whilst my niche is marketing and I am known as the “Guru of Coaching”, in all honesty I feel I do the people who are interested in marketing and promotion a disfavor by restricting myself to this blog about blogging. The truth is marketing and business promotion is not purely a topic belonging to those wanting to make money from blogging. I help entrepreneurs, small and medium business owners and independant, self employed people with marketing and business growth and what they learn from me is equally relevant to a blogger wanting to promote his blog.

For this reason I am closing down this blog but if you are interested in learning about ways to promote your blog or any business, no matter how small, and if you want free tips and free gifts to help you, then make note of the following:

http://www.terrilevine.com (being upgraded as of today’s date – new site will be live very soon.)
http://www.LevineBusinessCoaching.com
http://www.marketingwithterrilevine.com

Go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNRxb5ZEzrM and see how I can help you right now – you will find many coaching videos with marketing and biz tips.

Follow me on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Terri-Levine/105865813511

Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/CoachingGuru

Comprehensive Coaching is running full day conferences for business owners. Register to be on the Future Events Attendance Announcements List today,
to keep informed and avail yourself of special offers I offer only to those on my list. Find out more by visiting www.terrilevine.com

You can claim your free profit producing, wealth attraction resources at:
http://marketingwithTerriLevine.com

And you can follow my marketing blog here: http://marketingwithterrilevine.com/blog

I wish you every success. You CAN be successful as a work at home, self employed “entrepreneur” but to really make money you need to do more than just write a blog and sell affiliate products from it… a professional blogger can teach you to blog but they can’t teach you to truly market your resources and build a truly successful, profitable small biz for yourself that relies on anything more than blogging.

Blogging is just one tool in an arsenal of tools available to those who want to earn their income working for themselves on their own terms. I do it and I have taught thousands of other entrepreneurs to do it – it is what I love to do and what I do best and as I have just signed on double the number of new clients this new year than I had originally planned, I need to keep time aside to focus on them as well as other endeavours – another reason I can’t keep this blog going.

I am sorry for disappointing you but I assure you that if you follow me on my other blog and facebook and twitter you will keep up to date with what I am doing and offering AND pick up new tips and free goodies when I give them away.

This is not goodbye… just, until next time… on another blog.

Terri Levine

We all make mistakes sometimes. Making mistakes is not a “biggie”… failing to learn from them is the problem. Of course, if we can avoid making mistakes in the first place, that would be even better, but when you are new at something, it’s unreasonable to expect to be a font of wisdom. There is salvation in being forewarned. It makes it easier to avoid bumps in the road if you know where to expect them. In this regard, we can all learn from each other’s mistakes – so rather than hide them in shame, we should help each other out by sharing them.

If you are starting out in any business venture – and this does apply to bloggers hoping to join the Pro’s and earn money from it – here are some tips to keep in mind:

1. Wasting your time on irrelevant or futile exercises. Know what your goals are and focus on them. Aim for them and don’t be distracted by curiosities. A master of one or two areas is more likely to reach success than a jack of all trades, master of none, who is spread so thinly that he doesn’t have the time, resources, money or expertise to provide 100% value in anything.

2. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it… Time and tested true methods are popular for a reason. There are too many experts proclaiming their new method, new software, new book of wisdom, etc. is the next biggest thing. Word of warning: If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Run!

3. Why reinvent the wheel if you can perfect an existing wheel? The road to riches is littered with tired, broken and poor people who thought they could do better than MS or Apple or Google or Yahoo or Wordpress or Amazon… you get the idea. If your goal in life is to produce a new product or program that you know is going to be a huge improvement, then go for it, but if it isn’t, leave it for the experts and concentrate on what you do best.

4. Image IS important in business and professionals don’t use fake or free programs and products with which to do business. School children and home hobbyists use them. One classic example, and you will hear this advice time and again from professional bloggers is using a free blog host like Wordpress or Blogger.com. Wordpress is best used hosted by yourself using a professionally designed, customizable theme (not a free theme). The costs involved really are very affordable and worth it to stand out as a professional.

5. Choose a short, easy to remember and relevant domain name. If you sell exotic cheeses, www.buycheeseonline.com is better than www.wesellcheesefromallovertheworld.com Also, the best extension to use is dot com because it is the most recognized and usually the first and only extension people try when looking for websites. This also applies to choosing your blog name.

Stay tuned… I’m afraid to say there’s more! (But better you discover them now than later.)

Terri

Just like vlogs, photo blogs are born from the need to communicate and integrate in a community that has reached international dimensions. A photo blog mainly relies on photo sharing and publishing, while also using textual support as well. Nevertheless, when you visit a photo blog you’ll understand where the focus really lies; the phenomenon deviated from blogging with the advent of the cameraphones that allow the instant photo sharing between web users. The big advantage of such pages is that they are very dynamic in nature as compared to traditional sites. There are photo blogs that belong to individual domains and others that use larger collective services such as Blogger.

Widely accessible all over the web, photo blogs are managed with the help of specific software systems that enable content control. Thus, photo bloggers are able to upload materials and manage all posts without any restriction; the same unrestricted form is maintained for the access to photo blogs, since all that is required is a browser and direct online access. There are cases when the transition from text to photo blogs is made with the use of plugins and even code rewriting; thus a combination of text and image is possible when a blogger selects a daily entry option.

Usually photo blogs have a single author, nevertheless it is not uncommon that two or three people contribute to the same web page. The posts display depends on chronology, with the main page showing the most recent entries, but you may go back to the archives any time you want. Photo blogs are highly interactive too since users may leave any comments they want for a special entry. The presence of friendly links is also important in the photo blogging community, given the fact that creators come to move freely between sites.

It is totally incorrect to take pictures galleries for photo blogs; while the former is a simple collection images, the latter is a chronological log that uses categories allowing the user to navigate among them from older to newer materials and vice versa. It is not uncommon to also have photo blogs and moblogs as one and the same unit; though they may also function separately as well. A photo blog that can be updated from a mobile location such as camera phones could be labeled as mob logs. Nevertheless this latter concept could well function without pictures as well. In a nut shell, the composite character of the Internet allows the happy existence of hybrid blog types that enrich the puzzle even more.

The blogging phenomenon has reached such dimensions that presently it has gained prominence on a market where competition is anything but mild. This is how it came that business owners actually hire people to optimize blogs and keep a close watch over what happens on the web; companies that use blogs to make the relationship with clients and employees more informal and efficient are usually the ones in need of finding people for blogging jobs. After all, it takes quite some time to update fresh materials, answer comments and post opinions. Nevertheless, it is not uncommon to turn blogging into some form of home business.

If you could make enough money to live decently, I’m sure you’d like to stay home in front of the computer instead of commuting every day to the other side of the city. However, don’t make the mistake of thinking that income keeps coming without any effort on the blogger’s part; on the contrary, to make a blog profitable, you need perseverance, knowledge in the field, adequate software and a lot of time. Let’s take the simple case of search engine optimization – what we shortly call SEO. Finding the right keywords to incorporate in the blog content is probably the first corner stone in the business.

What are the qualities of someone who blogs for a living? First of all, you need full knowledge of how search engines operate in combination with an advertising program: Adsense or Adwords, preferably. Then, you should be able to make a serious selection of the keywords and understand the way you have to bid for them: the keywords highest in demand are also the most expensive ones. You have to be able to identify those keywords that become inactive or that have a very low return on investment rate, and thus be able to get them back in use or replace them with new functional ones.

Working as a blogger also implies Internet marketing and e-commerce solid knowledge. It is true that the general rules of traditional marketing apply here as well, but we cannot ignore the fact that the web is a different market with specific rules and laws of action. There are all sorts of marketing tools you may find available on various sites, and you should not ignore their importance, particularly since products and services promoted via blogs depend on advanced advertising techniques.

Keep blogging!
Terri

Some bloggers write authentically, straight from the heart; some write eloquently with a Thesaurus open on their lap; some write with the aim to dazzle with their witty turn of phrase, and others send you to sleep.

But you know what? Doesn’t matter what style bloggers aim for… certain bloggers are successful and some are not and it has nothing to do with their vocabulary, turn of phrase, witty repartee, or subject matter… in many instances, it comes down to personality. That’s right. It can be as simple as “do I like this person, or not?”

Now think about certain personalities that grate on your nerves or you just don’t like their style… imagine them writing to you… imagine them blogging. Or maybe you suspect you might be one of these bloggers, or maybe you are not sure.

To lessen the confusion, here are 8 ways you may be frightening your readers away:

1. Yawn! You send them to sleep. You are so boring you send insomniacs to sleep! You write in a boring manner and/or you ‘waffle’. Nobody has time to read a whole page of something that could have been conveyed in one sentence. Your readers are bombarded daily with a plethora of emails, blogs and instant messages, some of which are much more interesting than your offering. If your writing is dull and boring it is going to get lost in the abundant competition.
What to do: UP the mood. Be zippy and creative. Make your writing informative and fun. Use active voice, not passive voice, and if you don’t understand that, Google the terms plus “grammar” and get a quick online lesson! Your writing must entertain, inform and motivate because people are too busy to waste time reading boring rubbish that leads them nowhere.

2. You are “full of it”. Do you think all your readers are gullible or stupid? Do you not realize they can see through your outrageous claims and statements and this is the hugest turn-off of the century for them?
What to do: It’s time to be honest. Recently there have been too many businesses ripping people off with lies… don’t join them if you want to be successful. People can spot a phony a mile away.

3. You are “so” important that only your voice counts! Hmmm…if the good news is there is a time and a place for everything, the bad news is there is never a time or place for arrogance. Your readers could care less how clever or important you are… they just want to know how you can help them.
What to do: Stop trying to prove how important you think you are. Nobody likes or trusts a “big head”. Your focus should be on your customer’s needs and wants and not on yourself.

4. Not only are you arrogant, you’re heavy-handed. Pushy, pushy, pushy! You are overbearing and full of self-importance and it comes across loud and clear in your copy which is pure heavy-sell in nature..
What to do: Nobody likes a pushy salesman. You may know all there is to know about your subject but instead of pushing how fantastic and clever you or your product is, how about sharing your knowledge with your readers and let them decide if it is right for them and if so, how far they want to take it. Don’t shove it down their throats.

5. You are trying too hard to impress. This harks back to trying to be too clever with fancy words and phrases. Do you want people to think, “Wow, what a fancy vocabulary… too fancy for me!”or “Wow, this person knows a lot and is prepared to share it with me so I want to follow them!”?
What to do: Don’t use jargon or “buzz words” in an attempt to impress. Keep it “real”. Be honest and transparent and trustworthy if you want your customers to trust you and take it seriously. If your service or product is as good as you say it is, you don’t have to bend over backwards to prove it – it will prove itself.

6. Oops, Wrong Market! Are you wasting words and effort on an audience who could care less? Have you attracted a readership with one line of thought only to switch on them halfway?
What to do: Aiming your blog/marketing message to all and sundry is like shooting in the dark. You can’t hit anything because you can’t take aim and you can’t take aim because it’s black and you can’t see. Don’t target your marketing willy-nilly – take aim and fire with accuracy.

7. You’re shallow and can’t follow through. You start off well with wisdom to share but after a few months you have less wisdom to share… folks aren’t buying and when the going gets tough you get going… in the other direction.
What to do: Why waste anybody’s time? Rome wasn’t built overnight – sorry, tired saying, but still true. Either leave or re-focus. Realize you don’t just have to rely on your blog to promote your business – there is other social media networking, articles, joint ventures… research your product or service. You must have believed in it once to have started this!

8. Not Taking Care… If you have been reading that correct spelling and grammar doesn’t matter, then you are reading the hard-sell of an uneducated person desperate to make a sale to someone he thinks he can fool. Let me repeat, people are not stupid but they may think you are if you cannot spell!
What to do: Spell check and review your writing before posting. The odd mistake folks will forgive – but not regular frequent errors – that will just make you look stupid and nobody will trust you or what you have to say.

The blogging phenomenon perfectly integrates in the second generation of web services know as Web 2.0 since this is the most convenient platform for all Internet moves. What is there for bloggers with Web 2.0? First of all, the whole aim of the new web-technology is to facilitate collaboration and sharing between users, on the one hand, and increase the usage rate on the other hand. The next legitimate question that rises here touches on the best ways to attract traffic in the conditions of the transition to blogs that are sources of highly functional content.

First and foremost, we need to say here that with blogs web information is no longer centralized in terms of authority, not to mention that the freedom to use and re-use material is limitless. From a certain point of view blogs become a real market, in which content is the transaction environment. Hence, Web 2.0 traffic tactics mainly gravitate around the optimization of blog articles for advanced search on the search engines. Though it may be very tempting, don’t aim too high from the very beginning, it is almost impossible to get large numbers of visitors form the first blogging days.

The key to getting good traffic is perseverance and service quality. Content has to be re-freshed every week if not more often; in order to make that an easier task, it is enough to change some of the content, even if you don’t replace it all. With the large number of applications available with Web 2.0, you should place a Google search box directly on the site, so that any user may find it comfortable to perform any further search directly from your blog page. What’s there for you? You make the user spend more time on the site and, consequently, you increase the chances of his or her returning to the blog in the future.

People are now more interested in blogs that have RSS feeds; well, you’ll have to let Internet users know that as soon as you can! Initially, graphics were the best means to indicate the presence of an RSS feed; the great advantage now is that you can adjust the very colors used for this attention sign to the theme or topic specific to the blog itself. The system is created in such an easy to use way that all you have to do is insert the text and the color scheme and then a graphic pattern is generated immediately.

Many large and small businesses alike have discovered the great advantages of blogging in maintaining good communication relationships with both employees and customers. It is obvious that for some people, blogs have become a means of sharing information and expertise at very advanced levels and this can only mean increased profit for the company. It is common knowledge by now that small businesses profit the most from blogging. Why? Because a highly specific web page such as a blog, successfully substitutes an extensive online presence. Instead of a static page, you offer a very dynamic blog where feed-back is encouraged and various issues get tackled.

Blogging also appears to be preferred by search engines because the content is updated regularly.

Many Internet experts consider blogs a very informal, yet popular way of developing business contacts, since the informational content receives a different approach than in the case of classic promotion sites. Business owners can definitely enjoy great recommendations from users, but there are also dissatisfied customers who could review the products or services unfavorably. You’ll have to be prepared to handle such situations with the utmost diplomacy in order to avoid a worsening of the situation. On the other hand, a business blog provides the opportunity to run market research and avoid hiring employees that don’t fit requirements.

Business blogs also function as the right tool to spread news to all the employees at once; this kind of blog application is usually preferred by larger companies who can reach staff more easily and on a daily basis. Statistics claim that blogging significantly contributes to team building and communication between the departments of the same company; hence, there has been an increased preference for blogging over newsletters. Nevertheless, we should also mention the more challenging aspects of business blogging.

For instance, maintaining an updated blog requires considerable time and work, and it may even be necessary to have someone perform all the operations on a regular basis for you. Then the e-commerce possibilities are fewer when it comes to using a blog over a regular site; you may find it very advantageous to start blogging when you just initiate your business online, but then, you may choose to use it in parallel with a regular promotion site once things get to look brighter. If at the beginning you take advantage of the minimal costs required by a business blog, later you need to monitor efficiency first and foremost.

You can allow a team to post to the blog as some large companies do or if you are a small one person business you can do the posts yourself.  If you write articles you can recycle the content in your blogs and vice versa.  If you hire somebody to do your blogs for you, make sure they can write and provide fresh up to date content.

Whether you do your blog yourself or hire somebody to manage it for you, it is an important marketing tool and well worth the effort.

Good luck with your blogging and if you have any specific questions, leave me a comment.

Terri